Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 3

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The Tribunal started on 25th April at 10am. If you would like to view online you need to send a request for access as early as possible.

Send an email to

[email protected]

The subject heading of the email request should read

“MEDIA OR PUBLIC ACCESS REQUEST – Case number 2202172/2020 - Ms A Bailey – 25th April 2022.

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Abbreviations:
AB: Allison Bailey, claimant
BC: Ben Cooper QC, barrister for AB
SW = Stonewall Equality Limited (respondent 1)
IO = Ijeoma Omambala QC, barrister for SW
RW = Robin White assisting IO
GC = Garden Court Chambers Limited (respondent 2) (GCC would be a better abbreviation)
AH = Andrew Hochhauser QC, barrister for GC
JR = Jane Russell assisting AH
RM= Rajiv Menon QC & SH = Stephanie Harrison QC (jointly respondent 3 along with all members of GC except AB)
EJ = Employment Judge Goodman hearing the case
Panel = any one of the three panel members (EJ and two lay members)

Thread 1
www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4529887-Allison-Bailey-v-Stonewall-Employment-Tribunal-hearing?

Thread 2

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4542466-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-2

Hardly any objections.

He's trying to limit the damages. So if he can show that she wasn't available for work then she can't be compensated for the loss of it.

It's unfortunate that the diary says 'Keep Free' and not 'admin' but if usual practice was to offer work even at Keep Free periods and they didn't then she still has a claim.

Oops, opposing counsel.

Indeed - and Allison's team has responded in the chat to say that they've sent theirs out and cc'd the ET. But nothing from the Respondents, so far as I can see...!

It is boring as they seem to be going over the same stuff all the time. AH's practice in recording diary information seems to differ from Allison's but he doesn't seem to be able to grasp that. He writes 'paperwork', she writes 'keep free'.

It does seem to me though that there have been quite a number of occasions where AH's interpretation of the evidence has been a civil barrister QC not really understanding how things work in the criminal world. But then his job is to create uncertainty around the case AB is asserting rather than prove the contrary.

Oh he may well grasp it but he's trying to limit his client's liability.

I suspect now will be a load of questions about her health and making out she wasn't fit for big cases anyway.

AH is attacking what would appear to be a weakness in AB's case, the mechanism by which the animosity of the leading barristers at GCC had towards AB, translated into her practice suffering. He is making progress here because, of necessity, AB is having to rely on reasonable inference rather than direct evidence.

He's got a really patronising style hasn't he?

It's making my skin crawl a bit.

It's unfortunate that the diary says 'Keep Free' and not 'admin' but if usual practice was to offer work even at Keep Free periods and they didn't then she still has a claim.

In her witness statement, it says one of their excuses was that she had a number of 'Keep Free' days in her diary and that's why her income dropped.

Her Keep Free days were the fifth highest of all the barristers, yet her income was the lowest. The 4 others with more Keep Free days than Allison earned significantly more than her.

She went from being fifth highest billing in 2018 to the lowest in 2019.

Others in her cohort between 2018-19 experienced a loss of around 10%, Allison experienced a loss of 68%!!

Others in her cohort between 2018-19 experienced a loss of around 10%, Allison experienced a loss of 68%!!

this is why I don’t get his strategy. You can go through the diary line by line and claim nothing amiss with each individual instance but the overall pattern is impossible to deny, so what is the lengthy cross-examination accomplishing? Is it just to undermine her in general?

it must be the case that he is planning to attribute the obvious pattern in incomes to some factor that is specific to AB that is not her protected belief, or else there’s a giant hole in his argument. Maybe a pp is right and he’s planning to weaponise her illness.

He's definitely weaponising her illness and also implying there's a chance she didn't have a very good reputation. And to be fair, he is entitled to cast any doubt on the case against his client that exists.

Yes, he's trying to say

1. you turned down work
2. you were busy
3. you were sick and couldn't work

He seemed to bring up the sick note in a sleight-of-hand way and then to shut down Allison's complaint that GC(C) insisted that it be introduced in the disclosure even though they knew that it was inaccurate as a result of her GP's carelessness.

Iirc from Allison's mammoth witness statement it was the General Practitioner who made the error on the sick note. This was that the GP wrote that Allison had a sarcoma, when she doesn't but her condition falls under the sarcoma clinic's remit. The NHS does that - rare things don't get their own specialty so they go under the wing of a close relation. AH was trying to make it seem as though she'd lied. I hope Ben Cooper picks it up.

I was somewhat puzzled when Allison mentioned a 'drinks & nibbles party for GC women'. For a moment there, I though GC meant gender critical until I realised it was Garden Court.

AH can't have it both ways, though. He seems to have been asking Allison, 'why didn't you say anything at the time?'

Well, if GCC had an issue, why didn't they say anything at the time?

I hope BC unpicks this in his examinations of witnesses.

I guess it's possible that the 68% Vs 10% income drop was because GCC chose to disadvantage their black female barrister over the white male ones because they are sexist and racist, rather than because they were discriminating against her expression of her protected belief ... But I'm not sure that's going to help them much?

I've been off sick recently and my GPs have written all sorts of nonsense on my fit notes. I really don't see the relevance or how that has anything to do with Allison.

I honestly think that the gender woo allows a lot of people to covertly express their inner sexism and racism under the cover of 'being inclusive' (ffs). But because they pick on individuals, and hearings like this are about individuals, it's difficult to pin down any structural pattern - but it's there.

That's a pause in AB's evidence till tomorrow. Tomorrow is supposed to see AB giving evidence as well as, for Stonewall, Kirrin Medcalf and Zainab Al-Farabi.

There's now discussion between EJ and counsel about unanswered requests from journalists for the full bundles, and a list of names of journalists who have received the full bundles.

What a fuck up with the journalists's access to the bundles!

Thanks for the update, very helpful (haven't been able to follow much today).

Just the Stonewall witnesses tomorrow now, as BC will take the whole day to cross-examine.